著者
秋山 光和
出版者
国華社
雑誌
国華 (ISSN:00232785)
巻号頁・発行日
no.1011, pp.p3-26, 1978-05
著者
秋山 光和
雑誌
美術研究 = The bijutsu kenkiu : the journal of art studies
巻号頁・発行日
no.187, pp.1-35, 1957-03-11

This scroll-painting, labelled Manuscrit Chinois 4524 in La Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris where it is preserved, was introduced for the first time in 1947, and its facsimile, with notes by Madame Nicole Vandier-Nicholas, was published near the end of 1954. Thanks to the kindness of Madame M. R. Guignard, I had an opportunity to examine it in 1951. In view of its importance in the history of Oriental painting, I wish to give here a brief report of my studies. The scroll, lacking its first and last portions, is 27cm. in width (vertical measurement) and 574 cm. in length (horizontal). It contains a story about the construction of the vihāra and garden - Jetavana dedicated to Sakyamuni : it is a portion of the story in which six “heretics” or non-Buddhists, with Raudraksa as their spokesman, try to prevent Sudatta from donating the estate for the Jetavana. In the presence of the king, they engage in a contest of magic power with Sariputra, representing the Buddha's disciples. The heretics are defeated and converted to the Buddhist faith. The story is given in various Buddhist scriptures, the later ones describing it in more intricate forms. The Hsien-yü-ching, a collection of Buddhist legends in Khotan, edited by Chinese monks in the fifth century (455), narrates the competition in a series of six bouts. Later on, after the eighth century, the story began to be told in monasteries in China to secular people in an interesting, easily understandable manner called suchiang (popular sermons) which enhanced the story with literary ornaments. The text of these su-chiang is recorded in several versions in manuscripts entitled chiang-mo pien-wên (evil-subduing story) discovered at Tun-huang. Of these the copy in the collection of Mr. Hu Shih-chih (a small portion at the beginning of which is kept by the British Museum as “Stein 5511”; see Fig. 1) is nearly perfect. The chiang-mo pien-wên is in the characteristic form of pien-wên, consisting of alternate repetitions of narration in prose and verse (in this case each line consisting of seven characters). The competition between Raudraksa and Sariputra is told in the following six scenes: (The six matches are the same as those described in the Hsien-yü-ching, but are given in a different order.) (1) Raudraksa with his magic causes a mountain to appear; Sariputra transforms himself into Vajrapani and smashes it. (2) Raudraksa turns himself into a big buffalo, but Sariputra, transforming himself into a lion, defeats it. (3) Raudraksa creates a beautiful lake; Sariputra, in the figure of a white six-tusked elephant, drinks up the entive water. (4) Raudraksa calls forth a terrific dragon; Sariputra invokes the giant bird Garuda, which pecks the dragon to death. (5) Raudraksa, assuming the form of a demon, attacks Sariputra, who summons Vaisravana to conquer him. (6) Raudraksa produces a big tree; Sariputra calls on the wind god to blow it down. Thus beaten in all matches, the heretics are converted to Buddhism. The scroll under discussion, of which the beginning and the end are now missing (Pl. V & Fig. 5) begins with the middle part of the match (1) and goes through (2) to (5) in the order as. given in the pien-wên, ending with the beginning portion of (6). It is to be noted that the text of this scroll consists only of the stanzas, each inscribed on the reverse side of the paper near the end of each scene to which it pertains (each scene being about 120 cm. long). The fact indicates that probably while the scroll was being shown to the audience to illustrate the story. The text was read from the reverse side. We have literary sources which suggest a close interrelation between the pien-wên and painting. The existence of this scroll is an actual proof attesting to such interrelation. The magic competition of Sariputra and Raudraksa is a theme used quite frequently in murals in the Tun-huang area. The cave No. 9 in the western Ch’ien--fc-tung group has an example presumed to date back to the Northern Wei or Sui Dynasty; at Ch’ien-fo--tung there are twelve, and at Wanfo-hsia in An-hsi there are three. (Of these, eight at Ch’ien-fo-tung are reproduced in Pelliot : Les Giottes de Touen-houang, and one at Wan-fo-hsia is illustrated in Stein : Serindia.) Excepting the one (Fig. 9) at the Cave No. 149 in the Pelliot system, dated about 686 and differing in composition from others, all these are datable in the second half of the ninth to the end of the tenth centuries, and are approximately similar in composition. In all probability they were painted in conformity with a certain prototype. Furthermore, examination, through Pelliot's notes, of the text (given at the end of this article), inscribed in cartouches on the painting at the Cave No. 8, reveals that it contains at least ten passages which are faithful quotations from the chiang-mo pien-wên. From these facts we are led to believe that the murals, dealing with the competition between Satiputra and Raudraksa, which were painted very frequently during the ninth to tenth centuries, were derived from the chiang-mo pien-wên, and that they began to have a prescribed form when they were enriched with additional elements in detailed parts to improve their compositions as wall-paintings. The scroll-painting brought back by Pelliot does not reveal such conventions as are noticed in the murals. Most likely the scroll was painted a little earlier, porhaps in the first half of the ninth century. Its crude but powerful manner of depiction carries the same fresh vigour as that of popular literature which the pien-wên was.
著者
秋山 光和
雑誌
美術研究 = The bijutsu kenkiu : the journal of art studies
巻号頁・発行日
no.227, pp.1-18, 1964-03-09

Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji) written by a court lady, Murasaki Shikibu, at the beginning of the eleventh century has been a source of imagination for literature, theatrical art and fine art through the ages. Especially in the field of painting, pictures which illustrated interesting scenes of the tale were called "genji-e" and have been a popular subject until this modern age. Among existing examples, the beautifully coloured picture scroll made in the early twelfth century (owned by the Reimeikai Foundation and Gotō Museum) is the oldest, and the next is the Hakubyō-e-iri Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji with Black and White Illustrations) introduced in this volume. For this medieval manuscript, we have at present the large part of the text of 'Ukifune', the 51 st of the 54 chapters (with 6 illustrations, 5 scenes) and a few detached pieces of the text of 'Kagerō', the next chapter, both being important chapters of the final portions of the story. 60 pages of the latter half of Ukifune retains its original bound book from and this is preserved in the Museum Yamato Bunka-kan. In this binding sheets of paper were pasted together for text and illustration pages. The reverse side of every painted page is blank. The size of the book measured to the purple cover is 23.7 by 18.9 cm. But because of the use of thread for rebinding in a later period, the text and illustration pages are now 18.6 cm. in width. On the other hand the copy preserved by the Reimeikai Foundation (Tokugawa Museum) were broken up and the separate pieces of paper were split into two sheets, that is to say, into a front and a back by a special technique applicable to Chinese and Japanese paper, and were laid out decoratively on a pair of gold-ground screens. It consists of 23 pieces of text of the first half on the chapter of Ukifune (of which three intervening parts are missing), 4 illustrations (3 scenes) from the same chapter and 7 text fragments from the chapter of Kagerō. The illustrations of 5 scenes we have in both the Reimeikai Foundation Text and Yamato Bunka-kan Text are given bellow. The maintheme of this portion of the story deals with the love struggle to win the hand of beautiful Ukifune after the death of Hikaru Genji, between the two court nobles, that is Genji's son, Kaoru, and his grandson, Niō-no-miya. (1) Niō-no-miya, who had anticipated that Kaoru had hidden Ukifune in a mansion along the side of the Uji River in the outskirt of Kyoto, calls on Ukifune guided by his subject, Tokikata, under the shield of night. The illustration depicts Tokikata and the horse, both waiting for their master who had sneaked into Ukifune's house. The stylized expression on the face of Tokikata and the accentuated strokes seen in the vivid rendering of the horse and groom make an interesting contrast, providing an important characteristic of the picture. (2) Illustration B and C, which are now separately pasted on the right and left screens, are thought to have formed originally one composition covering two pages. Inside the house of Ukifune on this wintry night, ladies-in-waiting are occupied in chit-chat as they sew, and the hostess reclines on her bed. The one who peeps in on this scene from the veranda in the lower right of the illustration is Niō-no-miya, who later crawls in by taking advantage of the pitch darkness and thereby reaches the bed by imitating the voice of Kaoru. In this illustration the traditional method of oblique bird's-eye view is adopted and the figures are proportionally large. It is a compositionally well constructed scene. (3) The whimsical Niō-no-miya on his return to his residence in Kyoto, tries to allay the dissutisfaction of Naka-no-kimi, his wife, by embracing her in the bedchamber. Though this illustration has been hardly damaged and the ink tones are now faint, by means of infra-red photography we are able to make the pattern clearer. (4) This is the scene of the day following Niō-no-miya's later visit to Uji, when he forced Ukifune to board a boat and took her to the house of his acquaintance on the other side of the river where they stayed overnight. Looking at the snow-covered mountains in the distance,SCIO. the deep hue beautiful in the evening glow, the two, each in his or her own heart, contemplate the composing of poems. The landscape viewed from the villa garden across the Uji River creates a perfect harmony with the silouhette of the spell-bound lovers near the veranda. The text explanation for this scene, which is the first part of the Yamato Bunka-kan Text, is inscribed in an decorative oblique arrangement of letters. (Pl. VIII-a) (5) Lovely Ukifune who has received a letter from Kaoru suspecting her change of heart, is bewildered by the attentions of the two suitors, and has difficulty in replying. This piece is done in clear-cut lines and the composition is hard and stiff. It is supposed that originally several other illustrations now missing were inserted in this Ukifune chapter. In reference to Genji Monogatari Ekotoba, a directory of the sixteenth century which contains suggestions for visualization of the scenes customarily selected from each chapter of the Genji Monogatari, one can reconstruct roughly the lost pictures. From the viewpoint of the history of painting, this black and white illustration is of the most excellent artististic quality. Some classi· cistic features seen is its methods of composition may have been taken from older works. However, the brush lines have a delicate accent at their starting point, and this creates a pleasing rhythm together with the movement of the lacquer-black hair of the ladies. Being different from the richness and elegance of the twelfth century Painting Scroll of the Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari Emaki), it has an intellectual and a more or less detached feeling which is often seen in court art of the end of the thirteenth century. The calligraphic styles of the text are characteristic of this period in which the tradition of the Heian Culture tended to become degenerate as time passed. The calligraphic styles of Ukifune and Kagerō, while being very much alike do show a difference, the latter being the work of another hand which is believed to copy the style of the former.
著者
秋山 光和
雑誌
美術研究 = The bijutsu kenkiu : the journal of art studies
巻号頁・発行日
no.335, pp.1-14, 1986-03-31

This painting on silk (plates I~V) is presently mounted as a kakemono measuring 81.9cm inheight and 40.0cm in width. The scene uses a bird's eye view and oblique composition to depict a country mountain retreat in the snow. Despite the simplicity of the buildings and the mountainous area which is shown outside the wall to lower right, this painting had been mistakenly attributed since the 19th century to be a scene in the Kyoto Imperial Palace. It is probably for the above reasons that it was considered more appropriate to give this painting the general title of Nobleman's Mansion when it became classified as an Important Cultural Property in 1959. When last fall I was given the opportunity to more carefully examine this work rarely shown to the public, I noticed several points which immediately connected its subject matter to the famous 83rd chapter of the "Tales of Ise". The "Tales of Ise", a collection of brief lyrical episodes built around one or more poems, was compiled over the 10th century and has since held high acclaim throughout Japanese cultural history as one of the country's most important pieces of classical literature. Its various famous scenes have been illustrated in painting since the Heian period. The 83rd chapter describes the following story: the great poet and hero of the "Tales of Ise", Ariwara-noNarihira and Prince Koretaka of the imperial line shared a close bond of friendship thanks to their common love of poetry. Yet, this prince, extremely disappointed at having lost the chance to acceed to the throne, suddenly took the tonsure and cloistered himself in an isolated mountain retreat at the foot of Mt. Hiei in the northern part of Kyoto at Ono. The following New Year, Narihira travelled across mountain paths in snow to pay a sad visit to this solitary Prince. The poem which Narihira composed after returning from his visit was so touching that it became one of the most loved of all in this literary work.* If one looks carefully at the details of this painting, one can easily identify the three figures who have just passed through the gate in the upper left-hand corner. From their dress and posture one can see that they are Narihira and his two attendant companions. The principal building inside the inner wall is done in shinden style and is apparently that of the hermitage of Prince Koretaka from its modest but refined construction and the fragile fence (tatejitomi) enclosing it from the outside world. The delicate expression produced by very fine lines and the harmonious colors accentuated by touches of white snow impart a sense of poetic melancholy to the entire scene. Based on style and technique, this refined painting must have been produced, in my opinion, by a high-ranking court painter in the second-half of the 13th century. Furthermore, I feel that this oblong composition probably originally was one panel of a silk screen which would have been three shaku high sanjaku byōbu). It is possible that this screen was made up of six panels, each representing one of six well-known chapters from the "Tales of Ise". These six scenes would have been laid out according to the four seasons, beginning with a spring scene on the right and ending with this winter scene, the only one surviving today, which would have been on the far left. Thus, this work which has received very little attention until today may nevertheless have a very important and unique position in Japanese art history of the Kamakura period as one of the earliest illustrations on silk from the "Tales of Ise". * Narihira's poem is translated as follows by Helen Craig McCullough: When for an instant I forget, / How like a dream it seems....../ Never could I have imagined / That I would plod through snowdrifts / To see my Lord.
著者
秋山光和編
出版者
角川書店
巻号頁・発行日
1958
著者
秋山 光和
出版者
日本学術振興会
雑誌
学術月報 (ISSN:03872440)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.6, no.11, pp.784-791, 1954-02